The Charterhouse of Parma (60 page)

“But still,” the Duchess continued, “what would have happened, that
unhappy day
, if you had kept aloof as I hope you will do in the future?”

“The troops would have fraternized with the people, there would have been three days of bloodshed and incendiarism (for it will take a hundred years in this country for a Republic to be anything but an absurdity), then two weeks of pillage, until two or three regiments supplied from abroad came to put a stop to it. Ferrante Palla was in the
midst of the populace, full of courage and high words, as usual; he probably had a dozen friends who were in collusion with him, out of which Rassi will make a splendid conspiracy. What’s certain is that, while wearing an incredibly dilapidated coat, he was distributing gold by the handfuls.”

Amazed by all this news, the Duchess lost no time in going to thank the Princess.

The moment she appeared, the Lady of the Bedchamber handed her the little golden key to be worn at her belt, which is the mark of supreme authority in the Princess’s part of the Palace. Clara-Paolina hastened to dismiss the company and, once alone with her friend, persisted for several moments in expressing herself somewhat obscurely. The Duchess was uncertain what was being said, and answered with the greatest reserve. Finally the Princess burst into tears and, flinging herself into the Duchess’s arms, exclaimed: “My days of misery are beginning all over again: my son will treat me worse than his father ever did!”

“I shall see to it that such a thing never happens,” retorted the Duchess, “but first of all,” she continued, “I beg Your Most Serene Highness to accept here and now the homage of all my gratitude and of my profound respect.”

“What can you mean?” exclaimed the Princess, filled with anxiety and fearing a resignation was in order.

“What I mean is that whenever Your Serene Highness allows me to turn to the right the nodding chin of that mandarin on her mantelpiece, she will also permit me to call things by their proper names.”

“Is that all, my dear Duchess?” cried Clara-Paolina, rushing to put the mandarin in the proper position. “Speak freely then, Signora Mistress of the Robes,” she said in a charming tone of voice.

“Your Serene Highness,” continued the Duchess, “has understood the situation perfectly; the two of us are in the greatest danger; the sentence against Fabrizio is not revoked; consequently, the day someone wishes to get rid of me and to offer an offense to you, he will be thrown in prison again. Our position is as bad as ever. As for myself personally, I am marrying the Count, and we shall settle either in Naples or in Paris. The last trait of ingratitude of which the Count is
presently the victim has entirely disgusted him with public affairs, and were it not for the interest of Your Most Serene Highness, I should advise him to remain in this bedlam only so long as the Prince bestowed upon him an enormous sum of money. I shall ask Your Highness’s permission to explain to her that the Count, who had one hundred and thirty thousand francs to his name when he took up the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, now possesses an income of scarcely twenty thousand lire. In vain have I urged him to give some thought to his fortune. During my absence, he has picked a quarrel with the Prince’s tax-collectors, who were scoundrels; the Count has replaced them by other scoundrels who have given him eight hundred thousand francs.”

“What!” exclaimed the Duchess in amazement. “Good Heavens, how vexed I am to hear such a thing!”

“Madame,” the Duchess replied coolly, “am I to turn the mandarin back to the left?”

“Good Heavens, no!” cried the Princess. “But I am vexed that a man of the Count’s character should have thought of such methods of enriching himself.”

“Without that theft, he would be despised by all honorable men.”

“Good Heavens! Is it possible?”

“Your Serene Highness,” the Duchess continued, “except for my friend the Marchese Crescenzi, who has an income of three or four hundred thousand lire, everyone here steals; and who would not steal in a country where the recognition of the greatest services lasts no more than a month? It means that nothing is real and that nothing survives disgrace except money. May I permit myself, Your Highness, the liberty of some terrible truths?”

“I myself permit you,” said the Princess with a deep sigh, “painful to me as they are.”

“Well then, Your Highness, the Prince your son, an entirely honorable man, is capable of making you much happier than his father did; the late Prince had a character more or less like the common run of humanity. Our present Sovereign is not certain of desiring the same thing three days in a row; consequently, in order to be sure of him, one must live with him continually, allowing him to speak to no one. Since this truth is not difficult to perceive, the new
ultra
party, led by those
two splendid figures Rassi and the Marchesa Raversi, will seek to supply the Prince with a mistress. This mistress will have permission to make her fortune and to distribute certain minor positions, but she will have to answer to the party for the constancy of her master’s will.

“For my part, if I am to be properly established at Your Highness’s Court, I require that Rassi be disgraced and banished; furthermore I wish Fabrizio to be judged by the most honest judges that can be found: if these gentlemen acknowledge, as I hope, that he is innocent, it will be only natural to grant His Grace the Archbishop that Fabrizio will be his Coadjutor with eventual succession. If I fail in this, the Count and I shall retire; hence in parting I leave Your Most Serene Highness with this piece of advice: she must never pardon Rassi, nor must she ever leave her son’s realm. At close hand, this good son will never do her serious harm.”

“I have followed your arguments with the close attention they demand,” the Princess answered with a smile; “am I to assume the duty, as well, of furnishing my son with a mistress?”

“No indeed, Madame, but make certain first of all that your salon is the only one where he enjoys himself.”

The conversation drew to a close in this fashion, the scales having fallen from the eyes of the innocent and witty Princess.

One of the Duchess’s couriers went to tell Fabrizio that he could enter the city, though in concealment. He was barely noticed: he spent his entire time disguised as a peasant living in the wooden shed of a chestnut-seller, opposite the gates of the Fortress, under the trees of the promenade.

The Duchess organized some delightful parties at the Palace, which had never seen so much gaiety; never had she been more charming than she was that winter, yet she was living amidst the greatest dangers; but also, during this critical period, she never stopped to think twice with any noticeable regret about the strange transformation in Fabrizio.

The young Prince would appear quite early at the lively at-homes given by his mother, who kept telling him: “Now go and
govern;
I imagine there are dozens of reports on your desk awaiting a yes or a no, and I don’t want all Europe blaming me for making you a Wastrel King so I can rule in your place.”

Such counsels had the disadvantage of invariably being offered at the most inopportune moments, that is, when His Highness, having overcome his timidity, was taking part in some charade, the performance of which greatly entertained him. Twice a week there were outings in the country to which, on the pretext of enabling the new Sovereign to win his people’s affection, the Princess invited the prettiest women of the middle classes. The Duchess, who was the heart and soul of this merry court circle, hoped that these lovely bourgeois ladies, all of whom regarded the good fortunes of the parvenu Rassi
with mortal envy, would inform the Prince of some of this Minister’s countless rascalities. For, among other childish notions, the Prince prided himself on a
moral
ministry.

Rassi was too astute not to feel how dangerous to him were these brilliant parties of the Princess’s Court, concocted as they were by his enemy. He had not been able to bring himself to hand over to Count Mosca the quite legal sentence passed on Fabrizio; hence it was inevitable that either Rassi or the Duchess must vanish from the Court.

The day of that uprising among the people, the very existence of which it was now in good taste to deny, money had been distributed to the populace at large. Rassi started from this point: even more shabbily dressed than usual, he would enter the city’s poorest houses and spend hours in serious conversation with their wretched inhabitants. He was well rewarded for his pains: after a fortnight of such a life he was convinced that Ferrante Palla had been the secret leader of the insurrection, and moreover that this creature, poor all his life as a great poet would be, had sent nine or ten diamonds to be sold at Genoa.

Among others were mentioned five valuable stones which were actually worth over forty thousand francs and which,
ten days before the Prince’s death
, had been given up for thirty-five thousand francs because, so the seller said,
the money was needed
.

How to describe the Minister of Justice’s raptures at making this discovery? He realized that he was being made a daily laughingstock at the Princess Dowager’s court, and more than once the Prince, discussing business with him, had laughed in his face with all the naïveté of youth. It must be confessed that Rassi’s manners were singularly common: for instance, as soon as a discussion interested him, he would cross his legs and clasp one of his shoes; if his interest increased, he would spread his red cotton handkerchief over his knee, and so on. The Prince had laughed heartily at the joke made by one of the prettiest middle-class women at court who, quite aware of the shapeliness of her own leg, had proceeded to imitate the Minister of Justice’s elegant gesture.

Rassi requested an extraordinary audience, and said to the Prince: “Would Your Highness be willing to give a hundred thousand francs to discover for sure how his august father met his death? With such a
sum, justice would be in a position to apprehend the guilty, if such there be.”

The Prince’s reply left no room for doubt.

Soon afterward, Cecchina informed the Duchess that she had been offered a huge sum to allow her mistress’s diamonds to be examined by a jeweler; she had indignantly refused. The Duchess scolded her for refusing, and, a week later, Cecchina had the diamonds to show. On the day chosen for this exhibition of the jewels, Count Mosca posted two trustworthy men in every jewelry-shop in Parma, and by midnight he was able to inform the Duchess that the inquisitive jeweler was none other than Rassi’s own brother. The Duchess, who was extremely gay that evening (a
commedia dell’arte
was being performed at the Palace, in which each character invents the dialogue as the piece proceeds, the plot being posted in the wings)—the Duchess, who was to play a role, had as her lover in the play Count Baldi, a former lover of the Marchesa Raversi, who was also present. The Prince, the shyest man in his realm but a fine-looking young fellow with the tenderest heart, was studying Count Baldi’s part, which he wanted to act at the next performance.

“There’s not much time,” the Duchess said to the Count; “I go on in the first scene of the second act; let’s go into the guard-room.”

There, among twenty bodyguards, all wide awake and quite attentive to the words exchanged by the Prime Minister and the Mistress of the Robes, the Duchess said to her friend with a laugh:

“You always scold me when I tell you unnecessary secrets. It was on my account that Ernesto V was called to the throne; I had to avenge Fabrizio, whom I loved then much more than I do today, though always quite innocently. I know of course that you find it hard to believe in such innocence, but what does that matter, since you love me in spite of my crimes. Well! Here’s a real crime: I’ve given all my diamonds to an extremely interesting sort of lunatic named Ferrante Palla, I even kissed him if he would cause the death of the man who sought to have Fabrizio poisoned. Where is the harm in that?”

“Ah, so that’s where Ferrante got the money for his uprising!” exclaimed the Count, somewhat amazed. “And you’re telling me all this here in the guard-room.”

“I have no time, and here is Rassi on the heels of the crime. Of course the word
uprising
never crossed my lips, I abhor Jacobins. Consider the matter, and tell me your thoughts after the play.”

“I’ll tell you right now that you must make the Prince fall in love with you.… But quite honorably, of course!”

The Duchess was given her cue, and she hurried away.

Some days later, the Duchess received in the post a long, absurd letter, signed by one of her former ladies-in-waiting; this woman requested employment at Court, but the Duchess had recognized at first glance that the letter was in neither her handwriting nor her style. As she unfolded the sheet to read the second side, the Duchess found at her feet a tiny miracle-working image of the Madonna, folded up in a printed page of an old book. After glancing at the image, the Duchess read a few lines of the printed page. Her eyes shone when she found these words there: